An estimated
one billion people watched former Vice President Al Gore receive an
Oscar for An
Inconvenient Truth. In this film about global warming, Gore
uses slides from lectures he gives on this subject, personal anecdotes,
and footage of collapsing Antarctic ice shelves, receding glaciers,
and marooned polar bears to warn us that human-made greenhouse gases
are heating the planet to dangerous levels. The principle greenhouse
gas that humans make, burning coal, oil, and natural gas for energy,
is carbon dioxide (CO2). (In 1750, at the beginning of the Industrial
Era, the earthís atmospheric CO2 concentration was 280 parts per million
by volume. In 1960 it had risen to 315 ppmv, and it is now 383 ppmv.)

There is another
theory of global warming and cooling that Gore does not address in
An Inconvenient Truth. The Solar/Cosmic Ray Theory posits that
cosmic rays, not humans, cause climate change. The
Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change (2007) by Henrik
Svensmark and Nigel Calder is the first book to be published on this
subject. Svensmark proposed this theory in 1996 and supplies the scientific
input for the book. Calder, a British science writer, "strung
the words together," as he puts it. He does this very well and
explains Svensmarkís theory in an engaging and easily understandable
way. It will be published in the U.S. March 25 (I obtained my copy
from the UK, where it was published last month).

The Solar/Cosmic
Ray Theory says that cosmic rays make clouds. Exploding stars continually
spray the galaxy with cosmic rays, which consist of protons, alpha
particles (helium nuclei), electrons, and muons (heavy electrons).
The muons in this mix of atomic bullets make low-level (below 8,000
feet) clouds. They do this by knocking electrons off atoms and molecules
in the air, and these liberated electrons seed the formation "cloud
condensation nuclei." Water vapor in the atmosphere condenses
on these specks to form cloud water droplets. The wet clouds thus
formed block sunlight and reflect its rays back into space, which
has a cooling effect. In 2006, Svensmark and colleagues showed experimentally
how it is done, which involves adding sulfuric acid to these condensation
nuclei. (Plankton, microscopic plants in the ocean and to a much lesser
extent volcanoes and fossil fuels, continually restock the atmosphere
with sulfur.)

The sunís magnetic
field encloses its planets in a magnetic solar wind (the heliosphere)
that shields us from many of the cosmic rays that exploding stars
shoot our way. Sunspots, dark spots made by pools of intense magnetism
seen through a telescope, indicate heightened magnetic activity, which
deflects more cosmic rays away from Earth. During the 20th
century the sunís magnetic shield more than doubled, and the sun had
a lot of sunspots. Fewer cosmic rays reached Earth to make clouds,
and global temperatures rose. When the sunís magnetic activity wanes
and sunspots disappear, more cosmic rays hit the Earthís atmosphere
to make clouds; and the globe cools. The Solar/Cosmic Ray Theory of
climate change explains observations made over the last 400 years
since the advent of the telescope that correlate sunspots with global
warming and cooling.

The Solar/Cosmic
Ray Theory explains climate change on a geologic time scale. Our solar
system in its rotation around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy passes
through one of its spiral arms every 135 million years. These arms
contain high levels of cosmic rays. Astrophysicist Nir Shaviv and
geologist Ján Veizer in "Celestrial
Driver of Phanerozoic Climate?" (Geological Society of
America Today 2003;13:4-10) and Veizer in "Celestial
Climate Driver: A Perspective from Four Billion Years of the Carbon
Cycle" (Geoscience Canada 2005;32:13-30) show that
the variability in the Earthís temperature over the past 500 million
years correlates well with the intensity of cosmic rays hitting the
planet when it passes in and out of the spiral arms of the Milky Way.
They found that at one point atmospheric CO2 levels were 18 times
higher than they are today, and they were 10 times higher when the
planet was an "icehouse" during the Ordovician glacial period
(450 million years ago).

During one warm
period, 50 million years ago, the weather in the arctic was like that
in Florida today. The Arctic Ocean was free of ice year-round and
was populated by alligators and turtles. Axel
Heiberg Island, in the high Canadian arctic 600 miles from the
North Pole, has a well-preserved fossil
forest (discovered in 1985), in what once was a semi-tropical
swamp. At the other extreme, 2.2 billion years ago, and several times
more recently, the planet was covered in ice down to the equator,
making it a "Snowball
Earth." Planetary factors that have played a role in these
climate changes include the position of drifting continents and the
evolving composition of the atmosphere.

Other cycles
that drive climate change include the Earthís 100,000-year elliptical
orbit around the sun and its 41,000-year axial tilt cycle. (In the
most elliptical phase of the Earthís orbit, the sunís rays must travel
3 percent farther to reach the planet. The Earthís axial tilt ranges
from 22.1 to 24.5 degrees and is currently at 23 degrees.) And then
there is the 1,500-year solar cycle.

S.
Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery describe the 1,500-year solar warming
and cooling climate cycle in their book Unstoppable
Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years (2007). It has 528 references,
a glossary, and an index. This well written book is arguably the best
book to date on the politics and science of global warming. In addition
to presenting evidence for the 1,500-year solar cycle, first proposed
by European researchers in 1996, the authors address both the Greenhouse
and Solar/Cosmic Ray theories of climate change.

The sunís role
in climate change is due not so much to changes in intensity of its
visible and/or invisible rays, or irradiance, but to its magnetic
effect on cosmic rays. Changes in the sunís magnetic activity have
a four-fold greater effect on the Earthís temperature than variations
in its irradiance.

Todayís global
warming is part of a natural 1,500-year, plus or minus 500-year, solar
cycle operating for at least a million years. The Earthís climate
has warmed and cooled nine times in the past 12,000 years, in lock
step with the waxing and waning of the sunís magnetic activity (Science
2001;294[7 December]:2130-2136). Over the last 1,200 years there
has been a "Medieval Warming" (900-1300), when Greenland
was green; a "Little Ice Age" (1300-1850), when New York
harbor froze, and people could walk from Manhattan across the ice
to Staten Island a mile away (in 1780); and the current global warming
(1850-?). Rather than "global warming," a better term for
this phase of the solar cycle is "Modern Warming." Since
1850, temperatures have risen 0.8 degrees C, most rapidly in 1850-1870
and 1920-1940. Temperatures in the 1,500-year solar cycle fluctuate
within a 4 degree C range Ė two degrees above and two degrees below
the norm.

The Modern Warming
is not confined to this planet. Mars,
Jupiter,
Pluto,
and Triton
(Neptuneís largest moon) in the solar system are also warming.

It is not surprising
that the former vice president did not address the Solar/Cosmic Ray
Theory of Climate Change in An Inconvenient Truth. This "documentary,"
as the Christian Science Monitor notes, is really a docuganda,
propaganda disguised as documentary. It manipulates the audience,
with alarming images and a skewed presentation of facts, into believing
that humans cause global warming and that "polluting" the
atmosphere with carbon dioxide will have catastrophic consequences.
Unlike a true documentary, which seeks to inform the audience about
a given state of affairs in a balanced and unbiased fashion, in An
Inconvenient Truth Gore ignores or misrepresents evidence that
refutes the human-caused Greenhouse Theory. Addressing competing theories
on global warming in an even-handed way is not his intent.

Christopher Horner,
in his recently published book The
Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism(2007), gives a lively account of the data Gore omits that contradict
his global warming alarmism, especially with regard to hurricane frequency
and severity and the increase in weather-related damages. He also
addresses the filmís misrepresentations and some outright falsehoods.

The discredited
"hockey stick" graph of the Earthís temperature over the
last 1,000 years is one of them. This widely publicized and cited
graph reported by Mann and colleagues in 1998/1999 expunges the Medieval
Warming and Little Ice Age from the climate record. By getting rid
of these two phases of the most recent solar cycle, they make the
temperature for the first 900 years relatively flat and unchanged,
with the rise in temperature in the 20th century on the
graph made to look like the blade of a hockey stick. This graph so
constructed matches that of atmospheric CO2 levels during this time
period, which remained unchanged for 900 years until they began their
rapid rise in the 20th century. Although now acknowledged
by climate scientists to be false, Gore nevertheless makes this hockey
stick graph the centerpiece of his "documentary." (Hornerís
colleague, Marlo Lewis, has put together an excellent critique of
this film on PowerPoint slides, available here.)

At CERN, Europeís
particle-physics laboratory in Geneva, researchers are building the
worldís most powerful particle accelerator, the $2.4 billion Large
Hadron Collider. In the upcoming CLOUD experiment (Cosmics Leaving
OUtdoor Droplets) led by Jasper
Kirby, investigators will generate high-energy particle beams
in this accelerator simulating cosmic rays that they will use to validate
and better understand the connection between cosmic rays and clouds.

Al Gore tells
us in An Inconvenient Truth that he has given this lecture
more than 1,000 times around the world. To help solve the climate
crisis (his term for global warming), as a "recovering politician,"
he has gone on a crusade against CO2. Gore and his fellow climate
alarmists do not want anything to do with CLOUD and wish it would
go away. As Calder recounts in The
Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change, climate scientists
wedded to the greenhouse theory were able to block it when Kirby proposed
doing this experiment in 2000; but now, in 2007, with CERNís backing
and funding secured, CLOUD will come online in 2010.

A basic rule
of investigative journalism and criminal investigation is "Follow
the Money," or as Cicero put it, "Qui bono?" ("To whose
benefit?," literally, "[being] good to whom?").

Al Gore profits
handsomely from his climate crisis activities. Validation of the Solar/Cosmic
Ray Theory poses a major threat to this source of income. He will
not disclose his speaking fees, but he reportedly received $250,000
for a speech that he gave in Saudi Arabia recently, and his average
speaking fee for his global warming lectures is said to be $50,000
to $100,000.
Gore is also a founding partner and Chairman of Generation
Investment Management (GIM), a firm that "manage[s] the assets
of institutional investorsÖ as well as those of select high net
worth individuals." [Emphasis added.] GIM invests in companies
poised to cash in on CO2-caused global warming solutions, such as
government subsidized solar and wind alternative-energy ventures and
projects that reduce energy consumption around the globe.

The day after
he won his Academy Award The Tennessean reported
that Goreís electrical and natural gas bills for his home in Nashville
in 2006 were $27,360. This amount of energy, all of it generated from
fossil fuels, is more than 20 times than that consumed by the average
American household. A spokesperson for Gore pointed out that he buys
"carbon
offsets" to pay for his large "carbon footprint."
Gore invests these offset funds in GIM, the company he chairs; and
his apocalyptic climate forecasts (reinforced by those currently being
made by the UNís Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change) scare citizens and government leaders
around the world and persuade them to invest in alternative energy
programs, raising the value of GIMís privately held shares.

Can an individual
who stands to make millions from the CO2 global warming paradigm be
trusted to present an unbiased review of this subject and view with
an open mind alternative theories of climate change?

Global warming
is now a $5 billion industry, which benefits the government and its
politicians and bureaucrats, environmental activists, the media, executives
and shareholders of "green" industries, and climate scientists.
Businesses profit by gaming the regulatory and planned "cap and
trade" process rather than have to make money by producing things
people want. The ("good news is no news") media shamelessly
plays along and profits by frightening people. And we see how the
movementís most prominent activist, former Vice President Al Gore
benefits. Climate scientists are awarded $1.7 billion a year in government
grants to study climate change, but under the condition that these
scientists continue to support the "consensus" or lose their
funding. Climate scientist Richard Lindzen, in Climate
of Fear, writes : "Scientists who dissent from the alarmism
have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves
libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently,
lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the
face of the science that supposedly is their basis."

The global warming
scare enables government to intervene and extend its control over
peopleís lives. The House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate
Finance Committee, looking for ways to keep Social Security and Medicare
afloat and balance the budget, are investigating proposals for a carbon
tax, under the pretext of cutting down on Greenhouse emissions.

Gore barely mentions
the Kyoto Protocol in his film and says nothing about what sacrifices
people will have to make in order to reduce CO2 emissions. He does
say, however, that combating CO2-induced global warming will take
a commitment similar to what the country had to make to win World
War II. At some point in this climate war the government will ration
CO2 and issue "carbon credits" Ė CO2 ration cards. In World
War II Americans had to have the appropriate ration card to purchase
gasoline, tires, coffee, sugar, meat, and shoes; a certificate to
purchase a stove; and an authorization for vacation travel. At the
height of the War on CO2 global governance, which only a socialist
state can provide, will be required to rein in CO2 emissions, with
international inspectors at oneís doorstep prosecuting and confiscating
property of people and industries that make "greedy [CO2-producing]
choices," like using an air-conditioner and driving a SUV.

Government leaders,
environmental activists, and "select high net worth individuals"
(including, of course, Hollywood celebrities) will not be inconvenienced
by the strictures on CO2 emissions government imposes. In medieval
times the nobility invoked sumptuary
laws to limit what it considered to be conspicuous consumption
of the bourgeoisie. Carbon offsets in the CO2 war will create a de-facto
sumptuary law rendering the elite exempt from the hardships that carbon
rationing will cause.

Human emissions
of CO2, which account for 3 percent of the CO2 in atmosphere, may
not have caused the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 levels. It is a
reasonable hypothesis, but it has not been tested. Habibullo
Abdussamatov postulates a different cause for the rise in CO2
levels: "Increased solar irradiance warms Earthís oceans, which
then triggers the emission of large amounts of carbon dioxide into
the atmosphere. So the common view that manís industrial activity
is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation
of cause and effect relations." Whichever way it has happened
plants thrive with rising CO2 levels. Studies
show that plants and trees raise their productivity by 30-80 percent
when the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is doubled from 300 to
600 ppmv. Orange trees produce twice as many oranges. Satellite observations
from 1982 to 1999 show that global vegetation increased more than
6 percent.

The Environmental
establishment is able to ignore these benefits, but the Solar/Cosmic
Ray Theory of climate change is another matter, particularly when
validated by the CLOUD experiment. It is a paradigm shift that will
topple the charade of human-caused warming. Vested interests will
fight it. Too much money, power, and control are at stake.

Claims of warming
due to human production of CO2 are supported only by its association
with a recent rise in temperatures and on global climate models, which
fail to account for past climate changes and whose future predictions
have yet to be verified. Experimental evidence and empirical observations
of past global warming and cooling events underpin the Solar/Cosmic
Ray Theory of climate change.

One hopes
that science will prevail. It is the only way people can prevent the
climate alarmists, backed by the media and the state, from carrying
out their plan to "save the planet." If not stopped, they
will eventually establish global governance; dismantle modern technology;
cripple industry; impose carbon rationing with radical reductions
in the average Americanís standard of living and quality of life;
and inflict untold misery, suffering, and death for hundreds of millions
of people around the world.